Arkansas is a state rich in cultural diversity. From music to craft to food, the natural state is home to many unique traditions. Late last month, the Arkansas Folklife Festival gathered makers, growers, players and more from six cultural regions of Arkansas at Riverfront Park in North Little Rock.
Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis previously spoke with the festival's director, Rachel Reynolds, ahead of that Folklife weekend to preview the event. After hearing about it, he was intrigued. So we sent Jack down to Central Arkansas to explore. He spoke with a few different festival participants, and we'll be featuring those conversations all this week on Ozarks at Large. First up, the art of broom making.
Did you know the branches of a sassafras tree make the best broom handles? Traditional broom maker River Lovenstein says it's true.
"And the reason why we do sassafras is when you cut one down in winter, two will pop up in the spring. So it's a sustainable way of getting wooden handles instead of just going out in the woods, cutting a section down and moving on to a new area."
And if you find yourself in a sassafras thicket, there might be a broom maker nearby.
"We actually get a permit from the National Forest up in Mountain View to go out. And over the 50 years they've been doing it, we've kind of developed a few groves of sassafras out in the middle of the woods. And so there's a little secret hidden spots that if you know where to look, you can see a ton of sassafras trees because of us."
Lovenstein works with his grandfather, selling handcrafted brooms through their company, Grassy Creek Brooms. His grandparents, Jerry and Judy Lovenstein, moved to north central Arkansas near Mountain View in Stone County in 1976 to pursue a homesteading lifestyle on Grassy Creek. Jerry first learned the craft of broom making through an apprenticeship at the Ozark Folk Center State Park before establishing Grassy Creek Brooms. He's preserved the tradition of hand-tied broom making techniques rooted in Shaker and Puritan culture, and has now passed on what he has learned to his grandson River, who is keeping the craft alive.
"I think really what got me into it is the independence of it. I'm not working for somebody else, you know. I might not make a lot of money, but it's all mine. You know, the product of my labor is mine. And that means more to me than anything else.
"The reason why my grandparents started is because they were big back-to-the-landers, kind of like hippies, but a little bit different. And their idea was we can own this land, we can go out and we can farm broomcorn and we can harvest handles from our land. And so everything that we create is from our little spot in the world."
River worked with a nearly 150-year-old broom press and demonstrated how it works for onlookers. He explains the difference between the two styles of brooms they make: round cabin and Shaker flat.
"What we got right in front of us is a broom press. And what it does is when you wire the broom and plait it, it comes around. And that's still pretty much the style you see in Europe. All the like Romania and Spain will all have round brooms, but the Shakers, when they came over, they started having flat brooms, and thus brought the press with them. This one, we got it. It's got a date, a patent date, patented in 1878. And that was when that iron was pressed. But it, the job of that thing, it spreads it out. It spreads it out to where, when we put the stitching and sewing in on the broomcorn, the sweep of it, it'll hold that shape and sweep the floor a little bit better than a round broom."
He says there are a few reasons folks might want to have a flat broom.
"Practical usage, maybe — maybe not like the aesthetics of it. That's really who's to say as to why they keep a round broom. You know, I think it sweeps better with a flat than versus a round. We've made a few round ones, and they just don't seem to have the same square footage coverage. So, yeah, it's practical, as well as a little bit of aesthetic. It hangs on the wall a little bit better and doesn't flop all over the place."
But you can buy your own handmade brooms from the Lovenstein family. They frequently travel to craft shows around the state to sell their brooms. However, if you're not lucky enough to find them in person, just go to GrassyCreekBrooms.com to browse styles and learn more about them. River says he's also on Instagram. You'll have to make a phone call to order a broom, though — the Lovensteins are old school.
"We don't do cards on the website, so you do still have to give us a call and actually reach out and ask for a broom. But, other than that, we are online at least a little bit. I will say the website was made in the '90s, and it looks like it."
Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis reporting from North Little Rock at the Arkansas Folklife Festival. He spoke with a traditional crafter with Stone County's Grassy Creek Brooms.
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